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Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn

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Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn

#31

Post by tbrownaw »

vasco wrote: post #23
scarab92 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's overall beneficial for society to switch to nuclear. The problem you posed is just a market structure implementation detail. Government could operate the plants, or they could offer insurance to private sector operators.

I'm pro-nuclear but the idea that insurance fixes everything is strange to me. How much insurance money fixes you getting killed, would you say?

This is not a novel question.

If someone gets killed at work, how much do they get from workers' comp? What is a micromort and how much does one usually sell for? What did weregeld used to be back when it was still a thing?

Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn

#32

Post by willvarfar »

boxedemp wrote: post #26

Sounds to me like the real criticism is dirty electricity generation.

A lot of modern electricity generation is to power data centres and bitcoin mining.

Quick googling found a stat that 1.6% of the whole world's electricity supply going on computing and also https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-big-tech-uses-more-... etc.

And we need more! On day 2 of his presidency Trump pledged to fast-track new power generation to drive data centres in the US. https://www.axios.com/2025/01/23/trump-ai-power-plants-data-...

Drill baby drill! Using electricity on compute is driving future dirty power generation.

Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn

#33

Post by vasco »

tbrownaw wrote: post #31
vasco wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pro-nuclear but the idea that insurance fixes everything is strange to me. How much insurance money fixes you getting killed, would you say?

This is not a novel question. If someone gets killed at work, how much do they get from workers' comp? What is a micromort and how much does one usually sell for? What did weregeld used to be back when it was still a thing?

I didn't ask about an unspecified someone else, I asked about yourself. It makes a big difference to understand what I meant.

Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn

#34

Post by margalabargala »

Hammershaft wrote: post #18
croes wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who decides they are over engineered on safety? Didn’t we already learn better safe than sorry?

Even if you account for chernobyl and fukushima the death count from nuclear is orders of magnitudes less than the death count from coal, oil, solar, etc. We overregulated nuclear because the risk of nuclear disasters feels scarier than the real risk of deaths downstream of airborne particulates. There are tradeoffs to every safety regulation on nuclear and those tradeoffs include more climate induced disasters, a si…

Tell us more about the death count from solar. Is it all people falling off roofs?

Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn

#37

Post by pkaye »

SilasX wrote: post #28
markhahn wrote: post #12

Ugh, this is horrible writing. For instance, "Data centres cause pollution through high eletricity use" - high relative to what, residential housing? Aluminum smelting? It's fine to be skeptical of the AI bubble, but this article (ironic for FT) reads like veiled de-development. We also don't need any fizzy-drinks - shall we calculate the deaths due to pollution caused by that, let alone the primary effect on health…

Agreed. It reminds me of the article about how self-driving cars, by being safer, would worsen the organ waitlist.[1] Like, in what other context would you raise this concern about saving lives? It's the same kind of dishonesty, picking out one hot-button source of pollution, apportioning out its health impact, and complaining about it alone. [1] https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/self-driving-cars-will-...

As someone who got from an organ transplant, I'd still push for self-driving car and safer cars. My hope is pig organ transplants make it through trials soon. That could push a 7 year wait for kidney transplant down to a year which is a big deal because the long time on dialysis can have a lasting impact.

Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn

#38

Post by dmoy »

margalabargala wrote: post #34
Hammershaft wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you account for chernobyl and fukushima the death count from nuclear is orders of magnitudes less than the death count from coal, oil, solar, etc. We overregulated nuclear because the risk of nuclear disasters feels scarier than the real risk of deaths downstream of airborne particulates. There are tradeoffs to every safety regulation on nuclear and those tradeoffs include more climate induced disasters, a si…

Tell us more about the death count from solar. Is it all people falling off roofs?

Pretty much yea. So not exactly a fair comparison because e.g. grid level solar doesn't necessarily involve roof climbing.

But given current installation base, it's like 3x more deaths per unit energy than wind.

Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn

#39

Post by notTooFarGone »

scarab92 wrote: post #3

We should be building far more nuclear. We wildly overengineered on safety regulations making them far more costly and risky to build than they actually need to be. Even our older Gen II nuclear reactors from the 1990's are orders of magnitude safer than current fossil fuel power stations, in terms of both released radiation and lost human lifespan years. Moreover, the higher electricity prices that resulted from usi…

How about we build this stuff in deserts where you can just plaster everything with solar in like 10% of time and 30% of money investment.

You now have 70% of budget to build battery/wind and still got enough time.

This is solved with current renewable prices without ideological preferences.

Re: Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn

#40

Post by js8 »

scarab92 wrote: post #3

We should be building far more nuclear. We wildly overengineered on safety regulations making them far more costly and risky to build than they actually need to be. Even our older Gen II nuclear reactors from the 1990's are orders of magnitude safer than current fossil fuel power stations, in terms of both released radiation and lost human lifespan years. Moreover, the higher electricity prices that resulted from usi…

Nuclear is not economically viable compared to renewables (wind & solar), and it's rightfully on its way out.

What is really needed is for humanity to say "enough" and stop using fossil fuels. Would it be a problem if training AI models (or running any other analytics) be lot more expensive in winter than summer? I doubt it. There is no reason not to use more renewables for this use case, then.

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